Product School

★★★★★

Took this 8-week course starting Feb, 2016 and finished in Apr, 2016. I want to rate this experience as a five star and here's my explanation.

In my opinion, when I was choosing a training program, I want to look at three aspects:

1. Takeaway
2. Input
3. Accessibility

Let me elaborate on each one of this points for Product School:

1 Takeaway

• a product mindset -- from a product's starting point, to user research, and analysis framework
• hands-on knowledge of a full stack product manager's job scope -- user study, marketing/strategy analysis, product metric analysis, development cycle, product marketing, and presentation/ negotiation.
• Course materials include well-designed notes, and some practice materials are real PM job assignments from real tech companies
• A network of PMs or PM wannabes

2 Input

• (2.5 hours every Tuesday/Thursday or 5 hours on Saturday + 2-3 hours after class) = 8 hours x 8 weeks
• $3500 tuition

3 Accessibility

• I live in Bay Area, the fact that they have class open in Mountain View and SF make it really convenient for me.

I believe this is a worthy investment for those who want to be a product manager

This review is based on my experience going through this program early last year. I was in the 2nd "cohort" or the 2nd session Product School had. Since the program was fairly new at the time, I was a bit wary going into it, but it turned out great!

These were my observations (in no particular order), but do keep in mind that they were from an earlier "iteration" of this program, so things may be different by now:

• The first 1-2 classes were pretty fast paced. The reason for that was that there's just a lot of information to cover in the limited time that we had. I think any newbies who were not previously familiar with some concepts of PM, MVP, UX, or marketing may have felt quite overwhelmed. Just be prepare to take the info all in, but to digest and absorb it on your own time. You can always ask the instructors to explain more if you don't understand something either during class or during the breaks. Since the class is small enough, you won't have any trouble getting the time from the instructor.

• Each instructor made up their own content and slides, so some had good visuals, some could be improved. Perhaps at least a more consistent/uniform look and feel of the slides among the different instructors would help the curriculum feel more professional and polished.

• Relevant content. Because the instructors were actual working product managers, their content was relevant and based on real experiences. They provided guidance in terms of what worked for them, what didn’t and why.

• Smaller classes. Sometimes only a few showed for the weekday course, which isn’t as great because there would be less interaction and learning among the students. However, if you were just interested in the time you get with the instructor, then you definitely will get that.

• Flexible weekday/weekend course. Those who were enrolled in the weekday course, but couldn't make it could can catch up by attending the weekend course. This was a great perk of the program, especially for those whose work schedule is a bit more demanding. Fortunately, the weekend course remained small even though the weekday students were allowed to attend. There were usually ~10 students during the weekend, which I thought was just right - just enough to get good interaction among the students, but small enough to still get attention from the instructor. Also, the small number of students makes for a great and manageable support group post program.

• Quality instructors. All of the instructors were not only knowledgeable, but passionate as well. Passion is key. They really want to help you be successful. They take the time to explain things and to be personally available. Any criticism from them is meant for you to improve, so don't take things personally.

• Food is provided. Another great perk and more importantly time saver.

• Access to various PM/UX related tools and networking opportunities.

• Unlimited opportunities during your session and after to attend interesting speaker sessions, which serves as additional networking opportunities for you.
  
Hope this helps give more insight. Don't forget - learning is a journey. Your enrollment in this program or any other is part of that journey. Learn, connect and enjoy!

I have known for well over a year now that Product Management is what excites me and interests me the most. However I had not taken any action towards pursuing that goal. So when I started this course, I had a clear goal of actively studying and pursuing Product Management in my career. Now that I have completed the course, I can definitely say that I am in the right direction. 

Product school has designed an eight weeks course on product management, where students get to not only learn the theoretical concepts that a product manager should know but also apply them to one of their personal projects. 

Things that worked for me:

1. I had a very good instructor, a senior PM in one of the top tech companies. He was very approachable to get feedbacks and was brutally honest with his reviews.
2. My classmates were intelligent and brought some very interesting perspectives to the class discussions.
3. The course introduced me to solid frameworks that I can bank upon and also tools like balsamic and Proto.io which I can use for future projects

1. Product School has built a solid alumni network, and has an active slack community. It’s an engaging community where people share interesting articles, get user surveys done, create study groups, get their project reviews done, get introductions and get help in mock interviews.
2. Product School has weekly meetups, where industry professionals share their expertise and experience with the community. This is probably one of the highlights of the course that helps in useful professional networking.

What you should be aware of:

1. You aren’t graded for your efforts here and hence if you aren’t self-motivated you will not get anything out of the course.
2. 8 weeks in fact is a very short time, so starting off early with your project is really crucial or else you will always be in the catch up mode.

As a recent graduate of the Product School product management certification course, I can say confidently that it was a great experience! If you're already in the software industry and looking to transition into product or if you're looking to break into it from the outside like myself, there's a lot here for you.

Pros:

Lots of really informative content.

Knowledgable and helpful instructors.

Useful projects and exercises to build your knowledge and confidence in real-world product management.

You work on a project that gives you something to show to potential employers, building your product experience before you even get your first job!

Resume workshops and mock interviews to prepare you for the job search.

Cons:

Lots of material and exercises but not always enough time to cover it. Some topics get rushed through and you have to look over them on your own later.

Most of the focus on how to actually get the PM job comes towards the end of the course. Considering this is the trickiest part, it would be good to have more material or practice on this.

Overall, Product School is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about product management to see if it's the right role for him or her, as well as those who know they want to break into it but just don't know how!!

In mid-2014 I was being considered for a Product Manager role at Facebook and I had made it quite far in the process; having visited the headquarters and met up with a senior PM and being invited to a closed PM mixer by my recruiter, however, I couldn’t believe how far I had come but deep at the back of my mind I had this impostor syndrome. I just didn’t feel confident enough. I felt there were some holes in my Product management skillset: analytics, metrics, scrum, etc.

My search for a solution led me to discover Product School. I enrolled in the inaugural cohort of the Product School in New York City in the fall of 2015.

What sets Product School apart from the competition is that it places a premium on high quality tuition and as such is very thorough in its selection of instructors.  

All instructors currently work in the industry and are very well versed in the genre and thus bring a fresh industry perspective to augment the course syllabus. Their passion for the subject matter was clearly evidenced as instruction at Product School was top notch and very well paced. Instructors adequately accommodated student’s needs by adjusting their speed and mode of instruction.

Unlike your often run of the mill lectures and information overload instruction, I really enjoyed the hands on project based teaching approach by the instructors.

The project based course also had numerous assignments given to further reinforce the material covered in class. For once in my life I actually enjoyed doing homework and looked forward in anticipation to the next class session. Wish College courses was this engaging and relevant.

The Student to faculty ratio was optimal. Class size was kept to a minimum and was very diverse with people from all walks of life: bankers, IT personnel, UX Designers It also had a good female representation too.

Product school is also very flexible as it offers weeknight courses or weekend long courses. Such flexibility in scheduling affords students a lot of options. I had originally signed up to the weekend long session but during the course I had to switch to the evening session. This was achieved in a cinch.

Product School doesn’t only instruct you in just the hard skills but also gently infuses key soft skills such as presentation and public speaking which are essential to becoming a successful PM.

I was also introduced to several tools and Product Management industry specific software such as Intercom, Trello, InVision, etc.

Product school also provides its students with great support and timely response. There is a sense of belonging and community which is facilitated by a dedicated Product School Slack channel where currently enrolled cohorts and alumni maintain communication during and post-graduation.

This course covers everything you need to know about Product Management to jumpstart your PM career. The class highlights exactly what it takes to become a great PM, helping you figure out what strengths and experiences you can leverage. Product School delivers clarity of thought, a strong community, and the confidence to execute on your PM vision.

Armed with the skillsets and the PM toolkit I now feel very confident to take on the challenge of becoming a great Product manager.

Post product school, I have received several unsolicited job requisitions via LinkedIn from recruiters. What stood out to me was that each recruited specifically stated that I was being considered for these Product management positions because of my affiliation with the Product School.To me this a stamp of approval, a validation of sorts and attests to the quality and klout that Product School commands in the industry.

I recommend Product School enthusiastically without any reservation.

Product School offers an amazing platform to learn and practice the tools required to be a successful product manager. I was a student of Product School, New York and it helped me immensely in understanding the nuances of product management. Although I had experience as a product manager in India before I joined the program, the course contributed substantially in enhancing my knowledge.

The final project that each student needs to create, helps everyone to understand and execute the steps required to create a successful product. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the final project and getting weekly feedback from Jerome, a seasoned PM and a cool instructor who used to call us Product Ninjas...

In addition to the tools that one must know to be a product manger the course teaches one of the most important facet of product management- soft skills. Having experience in product management, I can admit that substantial chunk of time for a product manager is invested in coordinating and collaborating with different teams such as engineering, design or marketing and it is extremely important for a product manager to know what to communicate and when to communicate. The course helps you in gaining these skills   

Product School offers a strong network of seasoned as well as aspiring product mangers which keeps me connected to the latest trends in product management. If anyone is looking to change their career to PM, improve their skills as PM or start their own startup, I would recommend joining product school.

Product School is a great fit whether you have zero product management experience and want to make a career shift or you've recently started your PM journey and need some guidance. You will leave this course knowing how to ship a product that makes your users awesome.

The Curriculum:
You can view the curriculum on the site, so I won't go into everything it covers. What I enjoyed about the curriculum is it gave me a blue print to follow that I can always refer back to. During the class, you have the opportunity to test the blue print out while building your final project. Along the way, you have the opportunity to bounce ideas off of your classmates and get advice from your instructor. Expect about 3 hours of homework a week. 

The Instructor:
The instructor is the key to this course. If you scour enough sites and sign up for enough tools, you can probably put together your own curriculum, but you won't have a dedicated instructor. Our instructor was Ji Kim. He talked about all the methods and strategies that can be used, but he also taught an attitude and philosophy about how to approach the PM role. The feedback on our assignments was detailed, thoughtful, and actionable. Ji brought a lot of experience to the table and lessons in the form of stories from all his PM positions.

The class ends giving the tools you'll need as product manager and skills on how to land a PM role with resume reviews and interview advice. 

I'm reviewing for the SF Jan 2016 course. 

Pros:

Product School has only one training course, which is Product Manager training, so they have to get it right, otherwise they fail. And I think they got it right. I come from a background of 9 years in IT Consulting, of which software development is a huge part and I believe that this course does a good job of breaking down that process into logical parts that someone without the background can grasp. Even though I've been thru software development lifecycle time and again, I still enjoyed this portion of the course and refreshing on the various methods that can be used.

Like any course you get out what you put in, and who your instructor is will be key. We had a fantastic instructor, Ji Kim, who brought a wide breadth of experiences from many years of doing product management. Most people will be reading this review because they are trying to figure out if they should go to Product School or General Assembly, and here is how I made my decision: I looked at the profiles of the instructors. Ji had a solid track record in Product Management, the instructor at GA had a great resume, but only 2 years in a PdM Role....so who do I want to learn from? Ji Kim. 

I appreciated that Ji always taught the importance of data/metrics. When deciding what to build - you better have data to back it up, you also better know how you are going to measure success and when you ship, you better be looking at those KPI's! It couldn't be stressed enough, and I think this course taught us how to analyze data as a Product Manager from inception to delivery of a product or feature.

Last note..here in SF, I wish we had less of  "get users, worry about making money later", to Ji's school of thought, which is product market fit is not "you have a product that has users", it's "you have a product, for which users are willing to pay, and if you take that product away from them then they would be begging you to bring it back - that is true product-market fit" If this was taught more often, I think we'd be challenging ourselves the right way and we'd see some really promising products out there.

Cons:

As with any product, always room for improvement :) I felt there could have been some more guidance around the final project, perhaps instead of us finding a company ourselves to do a new feature for - just assign us a company. I also felt some of the group activities were too rushed and, therefore, didn't get much value out of them, so either a better schedule for them or remove them. Last - the mentor session was great, but a bit disorganized for our group, so a little more guidance to the mentors and the class would be good for the future classes.

Thanks Product School and Ji Kim for a great learning experience!

It can be tough to sift through all the info on the internet about best practices vs preferred methods and then making an informed decision on what was best for my role and company. 

What Product School provides is a conversation, an experience, and an application to source check and put into practice the learnings of a huge network of amazing product managers from all over the globe. 

I had a fantastic time at Product School and can't say enough about the strong ties built amongst my cohorts, my instructor, and the rest of the PS community. Lifetime access to a network like this is invaluable for someone like me.

Besides validating the self-taught knowledge I already possessed, Product School gave me such useful tools to step up to the next level of my career as a product manager. I can't recommend it enough.

I'm very happy with my Product School experience. I attended the San Francisco weekend session during the fall and I loved my cohort and instructor. Attending the Saturday class was intense - a lot of information was thrown at us but we also had guided class materials, our instructor, classmates, as well as the PS community as resources to reach out to. The eight weeks went by surprisingly fast and I was sad when the course was completed but I do still keep in touch with my former classmates and have connected with other PS members too. Carlos and his team have built an inclusive network of product people who are supportive of each other and willing to help, which can be difficult to find in a competitive marketplace. I can truly say that I do have a strong foundation in product fundamentals and how to put these skills into practice in real working situations. The education and mentorship I received was well worth the investment! 

Product Management is considered an accidental profession. There aren't many schools that offer a good framework to understand product management. I was a software developer in my previous life where I could see concrete deliverables assigned to me. I grew into a product manager role but struggled with it and in keeping with my developer mindset became more of a technical lead rather than a product manager. But within a couple of weeks at product school I could sense the difference in the way I perceived use cases,  and also in the way I presented to the management. I was able to easily come up with roadmaps and other deliverables that are expected of a product manager. You also get to walk thru some hands on tools like Jira, Balsamiq all of which have helped me with my product. I used my current product for  the final project and it has done wonders to my current job satisfaction as well. So why Product School instead of reading a book on product management? I would say its because of the real life examples, the great peer network you build and importantly the constant help you get from Carlos and team.